


Stuck in Colder Weather

by chucks_prophet



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Cute Castiel/Dean Winchester, Cute Dean, Dean Winchester Feels, Dean Winchester Saves Sam Winchester, Drowning, Drowning Sam, First Meetings, Fluffy Ending, Hospitalization, Hospitals, Hypothermia, Injured Dean, Injured Sam, M/M, Rain, Some Fluff, Some Humor, T for Mentioned Car Accident, Worried Dean, paramedic Castiel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-19
Updated: 2018-01-19
Packaged: 2019-03-06 17:05:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13415715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chucks_prophet/pseuds/chucks_prophet
Summary: It’s pouring over Lawrence like a Gatorade cooler onto the parched skins of football players. The canal’s likely overflowing, making for a near impossible escape alive. The boy’s lucky to make it out brain dead from hypothermia. At least then, his family would get to see his body before the belly of the canal digests him.





	Stuck in Colder Weather

**Author's Note:**

> Named after the song by Zac Brown Band. While I'm not their biggest fan, I do enjoy this song for the harmony and also immensely enjoy "Highway 20 Ride".

If Hell ever freezes over, this would be what it looks like.

Cas is coming back from a car accident. A girl half his age and even less experience on the road flew through the front window of her parents’ sedan colliding with an oak tree. Her name was Hael. She moved with her family from Montana and worked evening shifts at the Gas N’ Sip a couple blocks south of Lawrence High. He even trained her in inventory before leaving to pursue... well, picking her bloodied body from the side of the road.

So when Cas and his crew arrive at the canal north of the road they found Hael on the call of a boy the same age as her, fighting for his life in below freezing water, he doesn't expect any more hopeful an outcome. It’s pouring over Lawrence like a Gatorade cooler onto the parched skins of football players. The canal’s likely overflowing, making for a near impossible escape alive. The boy’s lucky to make it out brain dead from hypothermia. At least then, his family would get to see his body before the belly of the canal digests him.

They waste no time unloading the stretcher once they hit the ground. The two Crown Victoria’s that were tailing the truck shut their blinding eyes and, like racing horses from their starting stalls, four men in uniform bust out. The fire department is already a step ahead of them, holding the hose out for the policeman that retrieves the boy. Just as the first officer dives into the current, they hear someone shout, “Over here!”

Every first responder snaps their head. Sure enough, on the other end of the canal, they see not one, but two waterlogged bodies, one heaving the other from the angry water. Once they’re both on land, the man frantically starts performing chest compressions on the kid.

“Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to step away from the body!” Naomi, his supervisor, shouts. No response, from the teen victim or the man pounding his chest. In fact, he only pumps faster, making the boy’s body pulsate like a vase in an earthquake. “Sir, he’s coding, if you don’t let us in, he  _will_ die!”

The man stops, but not before sinking into the ground. Naomi and the rest of the crew rush in, hoisting the kid, who Cas can see has a contusion to his head, to covered ground. He doesn’t even so much as look up when Cas bends down. “I’m Cas!” he yells over the driving rain. “Your name?”

“S-S-S-S-Sam!”he struggles through clattering teeth, turning to Cas. His emerald eyes are barely visible through not only the rain slipping from his long, curved eyelashes like a canopy, but his stretched pupils.

“Your name is Sam?”

“N-n-no, I-I’m D-d-d-d-d-Dean!”

Cas isn’t quite sure he follows, but since Dean dove in the water after who he presumes is Sam, his brain’s probably equally as scrambled. “Nice to meet you, Dean!”

“Is m-m-m-my b-b-b-brother going to b-b-e o-o-o-o—alright?”

“I’m not sure! I can check on him for you, but first we have to get to safer ground!”

 “O-o-okay!”

“Follow me!” Cas instructs, their boots slapping against the muddy gravel just before another current smooths the grooves in their wake.

 

 

Dean’s heart pops like packaging wrap on a busy sidewalk just thinking about it. He supposes that’s a good thing, since the doctors told him he has a much more mild case of hypothermia, so he  _needs_  blood to warm his system again. They also told him he’s lucky to come out practically unscathed from such an act of heroism, but Dean doesn’t feel like a hero. Nor that he deserves to be unscathed. Not when he put Sam in danger in the first place. Not when this whole thing could’ve been traded for Dean’s recklessness.

So, since he can’t stop punishing himself and probably won’t for a long time coming, it’s all he can do to stare at his little brother on his hospital bed. He’s sitting up, sipping carefully on his third cup of coffee. He has one of those long flowing hospital gowns draped over his gangly body, which Dean would probably make fun of later, but since he’s adorning the same, he’ll let it slide. Over that are three layers of blankets, two wrapped around his bandaged head. His Bieber hair pokes out like dark, dried-up hay. His color is better, considering it’s a couple shades darker than vampiric white, but the doctors are keeping him another day for observation. Dean thanked them, but knew no one would be as watchful on Sam as Dean would be tonight.

“Sorry, I wish we had something other than coffee.”

Dean glances over at Cas handing him his second cup of Joe and takes it blessedly with slightly shaking hands. “Thanks, and it’s alright, I’m probably gonna be up the rest of the night anyhow.”

“To be fair, you’ve been through quite the ordeal in the past few hours.”

Dean scoffs, “Yeah, I wish that was all I had to be anxious about. Nah, I’m just gonna be chewed out by dad until tomorrow morning. I told him I was taking Sammy to a friend’s house because he’d never let him go to a concert—no less a  _Vince Vincente_ concert. The canal’s a shortcut I used to take to sneak out to see everyone from Alice in Chains to Blind Melon when I was his age. But then it started raining, and…”

“Wait, Vince Vincente of Ladyheart?”

“Yeah,” Dean nods, smiling a little—which, in his own recovery state, feels like a thin sheet of ice in the Antarctic breaking under pressure of the strange yellow ball in the sky, “you a fan?”

“Oh no. I’m actually more of a Zeppelin person. I just know a guy who knows his manager,” Cas clarifies, looking over at Sam on the bed, who’s still sipping serenely on his coffee. “He owes me a favor of sorts. If you want, I can try to arrange a private meet and greet.”

Dean feels his eyes widen. “I… I don’t know what to say, um… thank you, I guess, is the first appropriate thing and just… wow _. Vince Vincente!”_

“Are you sure you don’t have a Ladyheart?”

“Hey now, let’s not get crazy,” Dean warns with a stern finger. “I’m just excited for Sam. But if you know a guy who knows Gunner Lawless…”

Cas laughs, deep and rich, like a never-ending bowl of ice cream—it’s exactly what Dean  _doesn’t_ need for his recovery, but it’s what he craves. He’s also far from a bad looking guy with dark chocolate hair and navy blue eyes. His gummy white smile just tops everything off before it  _tapers_ off, a violent cough shaking him so hard he spills a little bit of his coffee. 

Dean takes his Styrofoam cup from him and sets both coffees on the tray next to them. Then, he takes the blanket over his own shoulders and pulls it around Cas’s so they’re joined by the same warmth. Cas’s coughing subsides enough for the smile to return to his face, paired even with a rosy tint. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Dean replies, smiling a bit wider.

“Oh my God— _really,_ Dean? You’re flirting with the paramedics  _now?_ ”

Dean drops his head, but not without an exasperated chuckle, “Welcome back, Sammy.”

 


End file.
